


Martyrs, Monsters, and Madness

by StellaLuna365



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Aaron wants to be literally anywhere else, Allison wants to pay someone to punch someone, Andrew Injured, Andrew Minyard Has Feelings, Angst, At least none of the Foxes, BAMF Andrew Minyard, BAMF David Wymack, Dan is gonna cut a bitch, Family Feels, Found Family, Gen, I hurt Neil for no good reason, M/M, Matt wants to punch someone, Neil Injured, Neil wants to live peacefully, No Character Death, Poor Kevin just wants alcohol, Poor Nicky just wants his boyfriend, Protective Andrew Minyard, Renee Walker is Terrifying, bamf renee walker, no beta we die like men, wink wink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27955577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaLuna365/pseuds/StellaLuna365
Summary: It's not Jackson, Romero, and Lola who collect him after the Bearcats game.Oh, they're there, threatening his team at gunpoint, and it's enough to make Neil choke on his own terror, but they're not alone.When Neil walks into the locker room, he's greeted with the face of his father that he hates and fears with everything he is, and he knows either Nathaniel, Neil, or both will die before everything is over....Andrew Minyard hates it when people touch his things....The badass plot twist no one asked for or wanted, in which it's not the FBI who save Neil, but a very pissed off team of Foxes.Maybe better than it sounds. You tell me. Sorry about the tag overload
Relationships: Andrew Minyard & Renee Walker, Neil Josten & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten & David Wymack, Neil Josten & The Foxes (All For The Game), Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 50
Kudos: 219





	1. Martyrs

Neil Josten’s life collapsed after the Bearcats game, and Nathaniel Wesninski was dragged back to the world with brutal, uncompromising efficiency.

After his shower, he’s on his way to the locker room to meet up with his team, fishing out his phone when it buzzes. He’s still a couple empty hallways away, trying to wrap his head around the stupid maze that is the interior of the Bearcats stadium, so he figures it’s one of his teammates texting him.

It isn’t.

It’s the same phone number that had sent the counting numbers, and Neil is all too aware of this morning’s 0. Brow furrowed, he stops in the hallway and opens his inbox to see the message, and views it.

_Surprise_.

Neil’s heart stutters, and though he knows it’s foolish, he turns around. The hallway is empty. Still, shards of glass are raking their way up and down his windpipe with every breath he takes, and he knows something is wrong.

Almost as soon as he gets his feet moving again, he hears a shout, a gunshot, and a scream.

He runs. For the first time in his life, though, he runs towards the danger, because that’s his team—his family. He knows their voices, and he knows that scream was one of them.

He runs so fast he’s sure he’s broken some record, and he skids to a stop in the open doorway of his team’s locker room.

Every single part of him dies, and he can’t stop the noise of fear in his throat as he clutches the doorjamb, panting as his eyes rake across the scene with fervent terror.

“Hi, Junior,” Lola Malcolm says, and he sees her with Romero and Jackson Plank and Patrick DiMaccio, in his peripheral he sees their guns aimed at his team, his family, the only people that matter, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the man in the center of the room, holding his gun towards Coach Wymack and Abby.

Nathan Wesninski turns cold eyes on Neil, and Neil breaks.

“Nice of you to join us,” his father says with a flat, emotionless voice, but Neil knows. _Nathaniel_ knows. Nathaniel is all too familiar with the rage in his eyes. His eyes sweep to the cleaver in his hand, the gun in his other, an axe at his feet, waiting to be picked up. “My greatest disappointment. You should’ve run, Nathaniel.”

Neil flinches at his name, his real name, and feels his façade creak under the strain, but that’s not the problem right now.

The other four are dressed in the uniforms of security guards, but his father is in plain clothes, dressed to the nines in a dress shirt and khakis, his hair styled and gelled, looking completely at ease as he holds his weapons.

That’s when Neil smells the blood.

He forces himself to look at his team, and the pieces left of his soul shatter.

“ _No_ ,” he whispers, eyes raking over his teammates, settling on Andrew.

Unconscious Andrew. Bleeding Andrew. _Shot_ Andrew.

_His_ Andrew.

Nathaniel takes over for a fleeting second, clinically assessing the situation and the wound. His team in huddled in one corner of the locker room under four guns. Andrew’s eyes are closed, his breathing shallow. It’s his shoulder—not life-threatening alone, but there’s blood on the floor and his clothes, and he needs treatment. His head is in Nicky’s lap, and Nicky’s holding on for dear life, tears on his face and in his eyes as Renee holds pressure to the wound, her eyes blazing with hatred Neil has never, ever seen from the composed woman.

Aaron’s face is ashen as he kneels beside his brother, and Kevin looks like he’s going to be sick, his eyes fixed on Neil like a lifeline. Allison is rifling through one of their duffels for clothes, he assumes for bandages, and Dan is behind Andrew’s shoulder, holding a shirt to his back. A through and through, then, if they’re stopping the bleeding from his back, too. Matt is beside her, a hand Dan’s shoulder as he watches.

Abby’s hands are clamped tight over her mouth, tears in her eyes as she trains her eyes on Andrew, and Coach Wymack holds her behind him, staring at Nathan Wesninski with murder in his eyes.

But Nathaniel knows the only murder tonight will be his.

Neil doesn’t realize he’s moving towards Andrew before his father stops him with a vicious backhand that sends him crashing into the lockers, sagging to catch his breath. His nose if bleeding. He hears a shout, and he thinks it’s Matt, but his father is in front of him before he can get his bearings back.

Nathan’s hand is around his throat before he can breathe. Neil chokes, gasping, but there’s no air, there’s no air, there’s no air.

He tries to scramble at his father’s hand, pry the crushing fingers off for a breath, but he remembers the horrible things Nathan did as a child when he did that. Nathan hated being touched by him. His hands twitch just shy of his father’s wrists as he desperately tries not to claw at the thick fingers around his neck.

Nathan smiles as Neil gasps. “Good. You remember.”

“Get off him!” Matt shouts, his face black in fury as he stands, only for Romero to kick him down. Neil flicks his eyes in that direction, his vision wavering, and tries to tell them to stand down, to be quiet, but he can’t breathe.

“Your team’s problematic,” Nathan says candidly, tightening his fingers. Neil chokes, and Neil see Wymack flinch, “especially the little blond one. What the hell is he?”

Nathan isn’t expecting a response, and Neil knows that, so he closes his eyes and tries to stay awake.

“Where’s my second greatest disappointment?” Nathan asks, his voice low and rough.

Neil tries to answer, he really does, but his fingers are digging into the lockers beside his hips as he tries and fails to breathe, and he feels himself fading. He can’t die, he can’t, not until he knows his team is safe, but Nathan’s hand is unyielding and colors are bleeding from the room and his head is swimming and—

Abruptly, he falls, landing hard on his hands and knees as he gasps. He chokes on it, coughing with the force of a volcano, wheezing as tears gather in his eyes.

This isn’t happening.

He isn’t here, trapped with his father again, with his team at the Butcher’s mercy. His mother can’t protect him, and Neil can’t protect his team, not by himself. He doesn’t know what to do.

“Dead,” he chokes out after he can speak again, his voice gravelly. He coughs, trying to get to his feet, but his father kicks him down. Neil crashes back into the lockers and sags, his hands limp at his sides as his head swims. He hears another yell, and this time it might be Coach Wymack.

His father’s voice is cool. “Quiet, or Patrick will shoot another one.”

It’s silent. Nicky sobs.

His father’s fingers find his chin, and it’s a cruel reminder of Andrew’s cool fingers drawing his attention until Neil blinks reality back into focus. He trembles.

“You lie to me,” he says, low and furious, “and I will cut them to pieces. They will never find all of them.”

Neil whimpers. He can’t help the weakness. It’s his _team_.

“She’s dead,” Neil reiterates, fisting his hands at his sides. He wants to scramble away, he wants to scramble to safety, to something, to _not here_ , but his family is here. He has to be here. “You killed her in Seattle.”

Abby shrinks at the words, a choked cry in her throat, and he doesn’t look at his team.

As far as his team knows, his parents live in Millport, Arizona, working boring jobs, and Neil doesn’t have a good relationship with them, but none of the Foxes do. It was an easily acceptable part of his past. Now, the truth is being extracted from him piece by piece, and his team only gets to see a fractured mosaic of the truth he owes them.

Nathan’s lip curls, and his fingers find Neil’s throat once more. He squeezes in warning, but it’s not cutting off his breath. “I would’ve remembered that.”

Neil swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his father’s palm, closing his eyes for a brief moment as panic threatens to overwhelm him. “She had—sh-she had internal bleeding. She made it to California and died in the—the car.”

“Where’s the body?”

Neil swallows again, tears flooding his eyes as he remembers smoke and ash and the sound of flesh peeling off the leather seat and the smell of his mother’s burning corpse. “I burned it.”

His father’s familiar blue eyes burn into his, and he can’t look away, even though he wants to. He wants to. He wants to look at Andrew, his team, his coach—but he can’t.

Nathan smiles. “Well. Points to me, I guess. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when she took her dying breath.”

Nathan releases him, and Neil slumps, putting a quivering hand to his throat as he breathes. He can’t bring himself to stand—everything is shaking too badly.

“Please,” he whispers, keeping his eyes trained on his father’s shoes. He flinches as he imagines the look Andrew would have at the word he hates so much, but Andrew’s been shot. “Please, let my team go.”

The look Nathan fixes on Neil is something he’s only seen a handful of times, including when he was burned with the fire poker. Neil cringes, but he doesn’t look away. He can’t. The weight of Nathan’s gaze has pinned his eyes to his father’s, that are so much like his, that he hates so much.

“I think Junior’s finally grown a backbone,” Lola says, ruffling her hair with a free hand, smirking at her brother. “We chase him down for nine years, and when we finally catch him, he has the nerve to ask a favor.”

“No. He’s still pathetic,” Romero says with a cool stare. Jackson snorts as Patrick remains apathetic.

Nathan is still staring at Neil, and Neil still can’t blink.

Neil has always been small, but slumped against the lockers as he is, his legs bent with the need to _runrunrun_ but the inability to do so, pinned like a bug under his father’s stare, he has never felt smaller.

Neil flinches as Nathan twirls the cleaver in his hand and crouches beside him. Neil cowers, can’t help it, but he doesn’t get far before there’s a hand in his hair the locks him in place, and the cleaver is against his tattoo.

Neil knows what’s going to happen before it does, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

His father has spent decades wielding his ax and cleaver, and while the ax is used for bigger jobs—limbs, extremities, chests—the cleaver is for his more intricate work. The ax is for quick torture. The cleaver is for hours of agony.

Nathan readies the cleaver and deftly hacks a chunk of flesh from Neil’s face, barely missing his eye as the tattoo is erased.

Neil screams, but his father mashes a hand over his mouth and shoves him to the ground, eyes merciless as he watches Neil writhe. Distantly, Neil hears shouting that isn’t his own, and he glimpses Patrick DiMaccio pinning a furious Coach Wymack to the wall with a forearm against his throat, he recognizes his team yelling, but Andrew is still unconscious, and Neil can’t imagine how much blood he’s lost.

But there’s fire in his face, eating him from the inside out, and he can only suck in desperate puffs of air through his nose as his cries are stifled.

“I don’t want that fucking tattoo in my presence,” his father hisses. “Want me to lop of Kevin Day’s face, too? Because I will.”

He hears Kevin make a sound of pain, a sound of terror, and Neil closes his brimming eyes and shakes his head. At least, he shakes it as much as he can with his father’s hand locked over his mouth.

“Then you don’t get to ask for things,” his father says, eyes burning. The icy blue is on fire, and Neil is helpless. “You are Nathaniel Wesninski, and I don’t care how fucking far you run, I will _always_ find you. Neil Josten is a pretty illusion you made to hide, and now that I have you, he’s dead. I’m going to kill him, and then I’m going to kill you, Nathaniel, and it’s going to be slow. I have a couple of ideas. Would you like to weigh in?”

Neil’s mouth is still covered, so Neil digs his fingertips into the linoleum beneath him and breathes.

“I was thinking about skinning the flesh from your bones a bit as a time, starting with your fingertips. I think that would be entertaining,” he says, concentration on his face as he thinks. “Lola?”

“Sounds exciting,” she agrees with a deranged smile. “You could do the chopping schtick, though. I liked that too.”

“Oh, yes. Lola suggested I chop you into pieces an inch at a time, cauterize the wounds as I go. Oh, maybe I’ll do both.”

“That sounds messy,” Romero weighs in, but there’s no disgust in his voice, only cold practicality.

“Messy is more fun,” Lola says.

Kevin’s breathing is so labored that Neil is distantly worried he’ll hyperventilate. Neil can barely see them in his periphery, but he sees black looks and fury and terror that he never, ever wants his team to experience. He never wanted them to see this part of Neil—the dark, dark shadows Nathaniel casts on Neil’s existence. He never wanted his father within one thousand miles of them. He never wanted them to experience what he did.

Aaron is frozen, and his usually impassive face is twisted, his hands pressed over his mouth as he looks at Andrew and Neil and the guns. Allison and Dan and Matt, so unbreakable, his seniors that are there for him and support him, look inches from cracking under the stress. Renee is still angry, so angry, but she can’t retaliate, and it must be killing her. Nicky’s sobs are a constant drone in the back, now, and he sounds horrible. He sounds like he did in Columbia after Drake attacked Andrew.

Andrew is silent, still, and pale.

“Well, we can decide later. Come up with some more ideas on the way back, I’ll see if we can work them in,” Nathan says. He finally releases Neil, but Neil can’t move. He stays frozen, limp on the ground, his mind swirling with what his father and his sick circle plans to do to him.

His breaths are ragged, and Neil is not going to survive this, and that is finally hitting him.

They were supposed to go to finals. They were—they were supposed to beat Edgar Allan, to pay them back for Seth, for what they did to Neil over Christmas break, for what they did to _Andrew_. They were supposed to make Riko pay the only way they knew how—strip him of the Exy title he loved so much.

After that, he was supposed to tell them the truth, the disappear.

Now, they’re getting the truth in jagged horrors, as they watch Neil suffer, as they watch Andrew suffer, without being able to do anything about it. Now, they see Nathaniel, and they see the Butcher of Baltimore. They see a crime syndicate with a body count in the hundreds, with bloody, bloody resumes and no end in sight. They see monsters, and Neil would give anything to hide them from the monsters.

He knows they’ve all had their own monsters, their own demons, but…beside Andrew and Renee, they’ve never seen monsters quite like this, and he never wanted this for them.

Everything is falling apart.

His face throbs, his throat aches, his chest tightens.

“Get up,” his father commands, and Neil is moving with ingrained obedience before he knows what’s happening, struggling to his feet. His father grabs the back of his neck to haul him the rest of the way, and the fingers are unyielding.

“Ground rules,” Romero says to his team, training his gun on Nicky as he speaks. Nicky jerks. “You say anything to anyone about what happened today, we come back and kill you. You come after us, we come back and kill you. You interfere with us or try to hunt us down in any way, we come back and kill you. And trust me, we know how to kill slow.”

Neil has never seen his team look more enraged. Not after he returned from the Ravens, but when they found out Seth was murdered…never.

“Leave Neil alone,” Dan says, her eyes blazing as she stares down Romero’s gun with enough heat to melt it. “He belongs with us. Nathaniel, or whoever you’re chasing, isn’t here.”

Romero smirks. “They’re one in the same, bitch. Or didn’t _Neil_ tell you about his real life?”

Neil flinches, letting his eyes slide out of focus as his father grips the back of his neck with meaty fingers. He can’t look at them. He can’t see the realization.

“I know,” Dan says.

Neil isn’t expecting that.

He looks at her, and she looks at him, and so does Matt, and Renee, and the rest of them, and there’s no anger.

Why isn’t there anger?

“Nevertheless, Nathaniel cost me money, time, and enough headaches to kill lesser men,” Nathan says. Neil winces. “He’s mine now. I don’t care what kind of petty claim you have on him. You’re children that I won’t hesitate to make disappear. I’m willing to leave you, mostly because I’m anxious to get back to Baltimore and continue.” Neil shivers. “But I’ll take my time here and let Nathaniel watch, if you’re anxious to die.”

“You will regret this,” Renee says quietly.

Lola laughs at that, loud and long. “You’re hilarious, sweetie. What are you going to do, exorcise us with that plus sign around your neck?”

Renee’s expression slides into a mask of calm, calm fury. “You will regret this.”

Neil believes her. But he doubts it will be in time.

“Guys,” he rasps, and it’s so inadequate, and it’s the first time he’s spoken directly to him since he got here. His team’s eyes fall on him, and he suddenly feels just how exposed he is. His armor is gone, the walls that are Neil Josten are crumbling, exposing the raw, vulnerable shell of Nathaniel Wesninski, the boy who can’t escape his monsters. The boy who can’t escape the madness of the Butcher of Baltimore, of the Moriyamas, of his past.

“It’s okay,” he says. It’s not okay. It’s anything but okay. He is anything but okay. But he needs them to be safe. The knowledge that they’re safe is the only thing that will get him through the next eternity of torture he’s facing, and he needs it. “It’s okay. Let…let me go.”

_You’re the martyr no one asked for or wanted_ , Andrew’s voice echoes in his head, and it feels like such a short time ago.

Maybe he doesn’t want it, but Neil needs to do it. It’s the only way even a shred of him will survive, because Neil’s existence is contingent on the Foxes. If they die, he will be nothing, because he only exists with them.

Even if he dies, he has to protect that. Protect them. The sliver of happiness he held on to even tighter than Exy.

“ _No_ ,” Matt growls, desperation in his eyes.

“You’re ours, Neil,” Allison says, her painted nails stained red with Andrew’s blood. “Andrew can’t say it, so I will. You’re not leaving again.”

“You picked a strong-minded team, didn’t you?” His father asks, hauling him towards the door. Neil stumbles in desperation and surprise, slipping in his own blood, his face pulsing in agony. “Coach…Wymack, right? You keep your kids in line, or you’ll lose a couple more. Got it?”

DiMaccio is still pinning the coach to the wall with his forearm, but Wymack is still furious. His voice is rough but strong as he grinds out, “You get your hands off my player, bastard. I don’t care who the hell you think you are, Neil’s a member of my team, and you don’t mean two shits here.”

Neil’s breath stops in his lungs.

“ _Coach_ ,” he breathes, trying to tell him to _shut up_ , to let him go, to survive and take care of the rest of his family—

“Save it, Josten. You’re not going anywhere.”

“I’m bored of this,” Nathan growls, dragging Neil by his throat to the door.

Patrick slams Wymack against the wall enough to stun him before following, Jackson and Romero trailing after them. Lola comes slower, keeping her gun on them. “You wait until we’re gone to call that ambulance, mmkay? And remember the rules. I’d hate to have to mangle another pretty face.”

Neil’s last glance of his team is to lock terrified eyes on Andrew’s motionless form before Neil is destroyed, and Nathaniel is dragged away.

…

Andrew is dreaming. He thinks it’s a nightmare.

He’s in pain. That’s unpleasant. He usually likes to avoid pain. It’s stabbing and fresh and raw, and someone is pressing on it, and it doesn’t make it any better. He hears voices. The he hears a scream.

Neil.

Neil is screaming.

This is a bad dream.

There are angry voices, and he hears the rest of Neil’s team, hears Wymack, then departing voices that he doesn’t know. Hears them drag Neil away.

This is a nightmare.

Then there’s Abby’s voice, shaking and wet as she works, and it hurts more, but he is locked in a very inconvenient blur of space and time, and he can’t claw his way out.

There are unfamiliar voices again, and people are touching him. Strangers are touching him.

Instead of feeling the fear he hates so much, he sinks away, and wonders if Neil will be there when he wakes. Then he hates himself for that thought.


	2. Monsters

Despite the Foxes’ popular opinion, Aaron doesn’t hate his brother.

Aaron doesn’t like him. Even if his mother beat the shit out of Aaron growing up, she was still his mother. Still his _mom_. Even if he didn’t love her, she was important, and Andrew took that away. To protect him, but he still took it away.

Aaron still can’t hate him. Doesn’t remotely love him, really doesn’t like him, but doesn’t hate him. He hates it, hates it like Andrew hates things, but Andrew protects him, and he knows that he’s safe with Andrew.

But now there’s a gun on him and the rest of the team and his brother is a bloody mess on the floor. He’s glad Renee knows what she’s doing, and that Allison and Dan are quick to jump into action, because he can’t move.

Then suddenly there’s Josten, Neil fucking Josten, who got Seth killed and is apparently now the reason they’re all being held at gunpoint, if the way his face goes so pale and the way he starts speaking to the man in the middle of the room, and the _insane_ fucking resemblance, this is his fault, too.

Aaron isn’t really mad. He’s long resigned himself to his brother’s desire to attract all things strange and dangerous.

He can’t think with the gun in his face.

His brother is all too used to violence, to pain, to blood. When they came in, when they took out the guns, his brother was a blur, and his knives were out of his armbands before Aaron even really realized they were in danger. Too bad the bullet was faster.

If Andrew was awake, maybe Aaron wouldn’t be so terrified of the gun.

But Andrew is bleeding out.

Aaron barely realizes it when Neil’s own father hacks off a chunk of his skin, the tattoo Riko forced on him, and—and _shit_ , Aaron doesn’t like him, but he would never, ever wish that on someone, especially not from their own father—

Nicky cries out, and he wants to do something to comfort his cousin, but he can’t move. He can barely look away from Andrew.

He’s never seen someone bleed so much before. Even Drake didn’t bleed so much.

He hardly recognizes when Neil—Nathaniel?—when the main guy drags him from the room, the woman staying behind for a few minutes to keep a gun—a _fucking gun_ —on them until they’re clear.

Then there’s Abby working on Andrew, and Aaron still can’t move.

Aaron’s never considered himself particularly strong—couldn’t stand up to his mother, couldn’t stand up to his brother, still collapses from some of the worse nightmares of killing Drake—but he’s never felt this weak, either.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when Nicky puts his arm around Aaron’s shoulders when the paramedics storm the room, but he lets Nicky stay, because he needs something. He’s almost ashamed to admit it, but he needs the comfort right now, at least until he can be with Katelyn. Katelyn always knows what to say, what to do, what _not_ to say or do…but Nicky’s his best friend, and he needs him right now.

“Nicky,” he breathes in something like desperation as they wheel Andrew away.

He’s never seen his brother still for this long.

“He’ll be fine, Aaron,” Nicky promises, but it’s so, so unbelievable through Nicky’s own watery voice. “Andrew doesn’t…he’ll be fine.”

But Aaron isn’t sure, because before today he didn’t think Andrew could be so still. Even after Drake—hurt him, he was laughing. It was horrible and disturbing in so, so many ways, but it was something.

Now there’s nothing, and Aaron doesn’t know what to do.

“We’re going to the hospital,” Wymack says as Nicky helps Aaron stand, holding him by the elbows when his knees shake. “Then we’ll figure out what to do about Neil.”

What to do about Neil. Neil, who was just carted away by—by who, the fucking mafia? His father the Butcher of Baltimore?

Holy shit.

It might be pity, it might be understanding, because your parent hurting you sucks, but Aaron hates Neil infinitely more, because he got his brother shot, and infinitely less, because he understands Neil more than he thought he did. More than he wants to.

But none of that matters.

All that matters right now is Andrew and how still he is.

Nicky keeps supporting him as they walk to the bus, and Aaron knows he’s thrilled to feel like he’s doing _something_ helpful, but Aaron’s grateful for the help, anyway. He couldn’t make it on his own.

The next few hours are blurs with recognizable snippets, and then he’s sitting beside his brother, who’s so much paler than he normally is, with Wymack across from him, arms crossed.

“You alright?” He asks in his stupid gruff tone that’s meant to disguise his stupidly blatant worry.

Aaron, wide-eyed as he clutches the stupid plastic seat and stares at his brother, shakes his head.

No. He’s definitely not alright.

…

Nathaniel’s hands and face and chest are covered in burns and cutting lines and gouges, and his voice is raw, but he keeps screaming.

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t,” he pleads through a choked cry, his father at his back working on his hands as Lola straddles his front, playing with his hair and cutting lines on his face and the sides of his neck. He’s handcuffed in the passenger seat of a car, his hands behind him at his father’s mercy, his face front at Lola’s. Romero is holding the dashboard lighter, waiting for the signal to cauterize the still-leaking gouge in his face. DiMaccio is in the backseat beside his father, and Jackson Plank is in the car in front of them. “I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t—”

“Oh, I believe you, babe,” Lola croons, petting his hair before tracing a thin line down his jaw, laughing at his whimper. “Now it’s just for fun.”

“Don’t mark up his face too much,” his father instructs, using his cleaver to gouge a hole in the fingertip of Nathaniel’s right index finger. The nerves are firing in confused desperation, and it _hurts_. “I want to send a video to the Moriyamas. They asked for some proof, and put in a couple requests themselves.”

“You really did a number on Riko’s ego, didn’t you?” Lola laughs. “Naughty boy, Nathaniel.”

Lola’s fingers wrap around his neck to hold him still as she cuts, and Nathaniel thinks that Andrew would hate seeing this. He wonders if Andrew is alive. He doesn’t think he wants to survive if Andrew isn’t, but that’s a problem for later.

He’s kidding himself. There isn’t a later. Later is filled with his father’s axe and cleaver and Lola’s knife. Andrew will not be part of his later. Andrew will not be part of his future.

Neither Nathaniel nor Neil has a future anymore. He is going to die.

Nathaniel breathes, low and ragged, and screams.

And screams.

And screams.

…

Andrew wakes in a hospital bed.

That’s his first clue in that something isn’t quite right. He hates hospitals, which he guesses is unremarkable with his track record, but hospitals hold a particular degree of prominence on his list of rated things. It’s well below Neil, but it’s still hovering around the words ‘I’m sorry.’

He blinks his eyes open and focuses on the stupid white ceiling, feeling remarkably like he was on drugs again. A little more heavy, a little less giddy, but it’s still a similar feeling. He recognizes presences on either side of him, and turns.

Wymack is beside his bed, Aaron on the other side. Andrew’s eyes are drawn instantly to Aaron’s red eyes, his gaunt face. He’s ignoring the pain and sitting up and grabbing Aaron’s chin before either of them even realize he’s awake. “What.”

Aaron blinks, slow and surprised. “You’re awake.”

There’s no joy. There’s no disappointment. There’s something far beyond the apathetic mystery that is his twin, and Andrew needs his knives, because this is how Andrew felt inside after the first time Drake used him. He knows that look, he knows that terror, the kind that tears you up inside, before Andrew quashed it with cigarettes and apathy. “Aaron. What.”

“Neil’s gone,” Wymack says when it’s clear Aaron can’t find words.

Andrew freezes.

The only thing Wymack could have said that would have hit Andrew harder was that Neil was dead.

He turns like a broken marionette, eyes unblinking as he stares at Wymack. “What.”

It is not a question. It’s a demand.

If Neil has run again, Andrew is going to kill him.

Wymack explains, and through it all, Andrew is silent. Aaron begins shaking. Andrew knows Aaron has never stared down a gun, and wants to kill whoever pointed one at his brother, but that will come later.

Neil is gone.

Andrew distantly wishes he _had_ run instead of this, because for all his promises, Andrew failed.

Andrew failed.

Andrew promised, promised, promised, and it was not enough.

Someone is going to pay.

“My knives,” he says simply, ripping the IV out of his arm and hopping out of bed. “Now.”

“Andrew, get your ass back in bed,” Wymack says immediately, his tired voice still demanding. “You were shot, you dumbass.”

“Can’t feel it,” he says, pulling on some drawstring pants under the gown that he quickly rips off, replaced with a folded shirt on the empty chair. “Irrelevant. My knives.”

“You’re not going after them,” Aaron says in horror, tripping over himself to catch up with Andrew as he stalks out of the room, Wymack hot on their heels and paging a nurse. “Andrew, they’re—they’re—”

He doesn’t finish by the time Andrew and his shadows reach the waiting room where the rest of the team is gathered.

He stalks right to Renee. “My knives.”

She wordlessly hands them over, and Andrew sees a part of Renee he hasn’t seen before.

She is furious.

Good. He’ll have help.

“Andrew,” Kevin says, his voice vulnerable. “You’re—”

“Sir, you can’t be out of bed,” a nurse says, recognizing him as a patient, hustling over. “You’ve just been shot, you need—”

She reaches for him, and he has a knife in his hand before he even thinks of making the conscious decision to do so. “You touch me and I will gut you. I am leaving this fucking hospital immediately. You will do whatever you need to do to work that out, AMA if you have to, but I am leaving. Am I clear?”

Wymack curses brilliantly and shoos the terrified nurse back. “Andrew. You can’t go after them. They’re—hell, I don’t know what they are, but they’re a lot bigger than you can handle alone.”

“He will not be alone,” Renee says at his back.

“No, he won’t.”

Andrew is distantly surprised by the backbone in Matt’s statement. Matt is standing, fists at his sides. Dan is beside him, arms crossed over her chest.

“Whether I have help is irrelevant,” Andrew says, beelining towards the revolving doors. “Allison, get me Neil’s father’s address.”

“I already have it,” Allison admits. At the other member’s surprised expressions, she says, “I called a friend of a family friend’s sister-in-law in the intelligence business. It was easy.”

Good. “How long will it take to get there?”

“Four hours, give or take.”

“We’re going to get there in three.”

…

Nathaniel is in agony.

He wakes, distant and foggy, and it comes back in lapping waves that build, swell, until he is drowning in pain. He’s been beaten, he knows that much— _“Romero, Jackson, why don’t you tenderize the meat a little before I get to work, I have some other business first”—_ and his hands are burning, every nerve alight with gasoline and acid and pain.

He wants his family. He wants Andrew.

He wonders if Andrew is alive.

He smiles at nothing, his vision blurring in and out as he stares at the cement wall of his childhood home’s basement, limp on the concrete.

Andrew’s going to kill him if he survives this.

He won’t, though. He’s trapped in the madness of his father’s reality, and there is no escaping.

“Junior’s awake,” Lola says.

Nathaniel closes his eyes and wishes he wasn’t.

“Good,” Romero says. “Your dad don’t want you to miss any of this. He’s going to be thorough and give you his undivided attention, so you need to be fair and do the same, okay?”

His father pats his cheek, but it’s more of a slap than the mock comfort he intended. Nathaniel blinks his eyes open, and wants to die.

He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted to die as much as he does right now.

…

It’s ludicrous.

It’s absolutely ridiculous.

It’s absurd, and laughable, and preposterous, and every other synonym Nicky can call to mind.

That’s the only thing Nicky can think.

“ _Andrew_ ,” he says, jogging alongside his cousin to keep up, wondering how he can move so quickly with a gunshot wound. Hell, they’d only been able to give him one transfusion before he woke up and bounced, and now he’s all but running towards the car rental facility Dan had queued up. Wymack is trying to talk sense into the others, but he’s been tasked with talking Andrew down.

“Andrew, stop, and think,” Nicky pleads, his legs still shaking as he remembers holding Andrew’s head as he bled out, watching Neil tremble before his father as he was—was hurt, repeatedly, and he couldn’t stop it. He’d never, ever seen Neil that scared, and he never wanted to see it again. “You didn’t see it, but—they’re basically the mafia,” Nicky embellishes, not quite sure what they are, but he knows it’s too big for a team of eight pissed Exy players and a coach. “I know you’re good with knives, but they have guns, and—and I don’t think we’re able to—”

“You stay with Aaron and Kevin,” Andrew says unflinchingly. “You’re not coming.”

Nicky will regret it for the rest of his life, but he doesn’t _want_ to come, anyways. He wants to save Neil, _God_ , he wants to save Neil, and if he had to he would absolutely go, but he doesn’t think he can be in the presence of those horrors anymore. Besides, Nicky isn’t a fighter—he’d be in the way.

Still. That’s not the point.

“Andrew.” He distantly thinks it’s going to be the last thing he ever does, but he plants himself in front of Andrew and prepares to be skewered, blocking his path. Andrew stops, and Nicky is actually terrified of the look in his eyes. “Andrew, you can’t…we can’t win this one. We can call the police, they’ll get him, but…you didn’t see.” Nicky’s voice trembles, his throat bobs, and he wants Erik more than he ever has. “They’re monsters, Andrew.”

Nicky has never believed in monsters in the supernatural sense. The human sense is whole other realm of possibility. He knows they’re out there—of course he knows—as humans in daylight and moonlight, angels in one and demons in another, but though he’s come across horrible people, people that hurt him and hurt people he loves, he’s never come across _monsters_.

The others have caught up at this point, so they all hear Andrew’s emotionless response.

“You forget,” he says coolly. There’s no trace of emotion in his face or voice or eyes, not even the warning stare that typically warns Nicky away. That scares Nicky more. “I’m a monster, too.”

Andrew blurs by him, continuing unfazed.

Nicky can’t respond to that, so he swallows, and trails his cousin, and prays none of them die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe. Hope you liked it! We'll get back to focusing on Neil and the stuff next chapter, but I'm trying to do a bit of POV from everyone. I think the last two chapters are gonna be pretty long, or I'll split them into parts. Lemme know what you thought! And thanks so much for all the support on the first chapter!


	3. Madness

Allison gives the keys to the rental car to Andrew, who gives them to Dan. Dan is shocked, at first, staring at the keys like they’ll burn her. Or, more likely, that their holder will gut her.

“You’re going to drive like your life depends on it, because it does,” Andrew instructs, “and you’re going to get me there in three hours.”

Dan nods. “Make that less.” She figures even if Neil _wasn’t_ in danger, she wouldn’t want to risk Andrew’s knife in her back. His shoulder must be hurting more than he’s letting on.

Still, Andrew nods in approval.

Matt, Dan, Renee, and Andrew are going. Nicky, Kevin, Aaron, and Allison are not. Allison is not trained in any type of fighting and she’s not built for it, and she acknowledges that while she would love to get her hands on these guys, she’d be more of a hinderance than a help.

Dan knows that Kevin is too shaken to be of any use, and Nicky can’t fight. Nicky just doesn’t have it in him. Aaron might be useful, but Andrew will never, ever let him be in the presence of a weapon when he has a say in it. Besides, Dan doesn’t think she’s ever seen Apathetic Twin 2 so shaken in all their time on the same team, and he’s going to need Nicky.

Wymack is looking at them all with something like physical pain. Dan doesn’t see it often.

“We’ll come back,” Dan assures through the rolled-down window of the driver’s side. “And we’ll bring Neil.”

“Neil’s going to need a hospital,” Wymack says with a flat tone, muscles taut in anger, “and that’s going to need to be your first stop once you get him, most likely. The other four will follow you down in a little while.”

“What will you do?” Dan asks, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror as Andrew growls in impatience.

Wymack scratches his head, then sighs. He opens the back door. “Scoot over.”

Renee does, and Wymack climbs in, and rolls down his own window. “You follow us in an hour and you find somewhere to _stay low and safe_ ,” Wymack instructs, his voice thick in warning. “Allison, keep your phone on. Understood?”

Allison nods. “Be careful.”

Dan nods, smiling at her friend. “We’ll be fine.”

She doesn’t know if either of them believes it, but she prays it’s true.

Dan floors it.

…

Two hours, fifty-six minutes, and at least eight broken traffic laws later, they pull to a stop down the street from the address Reynolds gave them. Wymack is pretty sure his intestines are still somewhere about an hour and a half back, but Josten’s close, so that doesn’t matter.

Minyard already has his hand on the door handle, but Renee grabs his wrist before he can get out. “We need a plan. We will get Neil killed if we go in without one.”

Wymack is glad Renee knows how to handle Andrew, because that’s probably the only thing she could’ve said to get Andrew to chill out a damn miunte. “Reynolds didn’t happen to get a floorplan with that address, did she?”

Wilds raises an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”

Wymack sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, and sighs again. “You idiots are going to kill me.”

“Plan faster,” Minyard says. The look in his eyes spells absolute murder.

“Well, I’d love to, but we don’t have a lot to go on,” Boyd weighs in, nearly vibrating with adrenaline. Wymack hasn’t seen him this mad since the aftermath of his own trip to Columbia.

“He will have Neil in a private room, a basement, or somewhere similar,” Renee says. “I know men like him. He will want undivided privacy.”

“If he’s involved in all the illegal stuff we think he is, won’t he have a bunch of security in his house, though?” Boyd says. “It may be hard to find the private room, let alone get past the guards undetected.”

“I will take care of the guards,” Renee says. “Dan, give me your jacket.”

Wilds blinks, but hands it over. It’s nothing special, just a black zip-up, but Renee seems adamant.

Wymack doesn’t know everything about Renee’s past, but he knows if she’s acting like this, shit’s about to hit the fan. He’s been Renee’s coach long enough to glimpse the girl behind the smile and the cross, and Wymack definitely wouldn’t want her against him any day.

“Okay. When you’ve taken out the people upstairs, we’ll follow you in to look for the basement, private room, whatever,” Wymack says, cold fear in his gut as he thinks about sending tiny Renee, no matter her skills—any of his players—into a house full of hostile murderers. “Andrew?”

“Yes, I am going with her.”

Wymack sighs. “Fine. Don’t tear your stitches, idiot. Abby will kill me.”

Andrew is out of the car before he’s finished talking. Renee is close behind him.

They disappear into the shadows, and Wymack considers the kids on his Exy team, and wonders how the fuck he hasn’t died of high blood pressure or a heart attack yet.

“You two stay here,” Wymack orders, circling to the back of the car and opening the trunk, finding his prize towards the back. He left the tire iron in his hands, and it’s a scarily familiar weight.

“Wait, you’re going with them?” Boyd asks incredulously, eyeing the tire iron. “Coach, it’s—”

“Save your worries for someone who wants them, Boyd,” Wymack grunts, catching sight of their dubious faces as he shrugs off his jacket. No matter how good Renee and Andrew are, they’re going to need him. That meathead that nearly popped his head off in the locker is no joke, and the woman is a different kind of crazy. They’ll need numbers.

“But…will you be okay?” Wilds asks hesitantly, hanging out the driver’s side window. “I mean, they’re…you know…”

Wymack sighs and rubs the back of his neck, feeling a vein in his forehead pop. He wanted to avoid this, but he guesses it’s too late now. “Why the fuck do you think I’d waste my time, effort, and position on recruiting kids who need second chances?”

The power couple blinks at the obvious change in subject, so Wymack spells it out for them. “I’m not a fucking saint, dumbasses. Get your heads out of your asses. I’ll be just fine.”

He twirls the tire iron in his hand, the familiar feel of flaking iron comforting in his palm, and starts towards the house.

He may be a shit father, he may be a mediocre coach, but that doesn’t mean he won’t walk through hell for his players, if that’s what it takes.

…

Nathaniel wants to die.

_No you don’t, you idiot_ , Andrew’s voice pounds in his head, but for once, Nathaniel can’t hold onto it. Neil might have been able to, but not Nathaniel.

He doesn’t want his life to end. He doesn’t want to never see his family again. He doesn’t want the last time he sees Andrew to be the sight of him bleeding out on another team’s locker room floor, put down by one of his father’s men. He wants to play Exy again. He wants to go to the roof and smoke another cigarette and play another round and win nationals and beat Riko and the Ravens. He wants to live.

But he knows that the rest of his life is going to be filled with nothing but unimaginable, unquantifiable agony, and he wants to avoid that. The only route he sees right now is death.

Nathaniel drifts in limbo, not quite unconscious but not quite awake, resting. He’s regaining what little energy he can, staying as immobile as possible so that when he fights, he has something of a chance. Because hell yeah, he’s going to fight. After nine years of running, nine years of pain, and one lucky year of family, he owes it to his mother, to his team, to _Andrew_ to fight.

It’s futile and he’s going to die regardless, but he has to fight.

He uses the pain-dulled haze to think of what he can. He has no weapons, and he’s wounded badly. He can barely use his hands—even throwing a punch will probably do more damage to him than to whoever he punches. He’s weak from the beating and the torture and the fear, and his arms are useless.

But he’s always been fast.

Maybe it’s meaningless here, but he owes it to everyone to _try_.

Fear shreds his numb haze as he hears the door swing open and his father’s voice pierces what little comfort he has.

“Get up,” his father says. It’s cold and flat, punctuated by percussive footsteps down the basement steps. It sounds like the drumbeat of an executioner in Nathaniel’s ringing ears.

Nathaniel obeys.

He stumbles and sways, wheezing in staggered breaths as his ribs threaten to give, as his knees threaten to buckle, but he stands. It’s difficult. It’s difficult both physically, to keep his battered body from folding, and mentally, to remain standing under the overwhelming pressure of his father’s dispassionate eyes.

But he stands, because if the Foxes have taught him anything, it’s how to stand instead of run.

His father’s eyes rake up and down his body, leaving thorns of fear each time they pause, but Nathaniel stands. Neil stands.

“Still obedient,” his father comments, adjusting his grip on his cleaver, “but it looks like nine years out of the house erased a few of my lessons.”

Nathaniel doesn’t have time to move before Nathan has crossed the distance and sent him crashing back to the ground with a backhand to his injured cheek. Nathaniel makes the mistake of trying to catch himself, and acid spears through his arms, drawing a choked cry from his aching lungs.

Nathaniel coughs, lifting himself up by his elbows, feeling smothered by the cold hatred in his father’s eyes. Lola watches with a twisted smile, DiMaccio watches with cold indifference, but Nathan’s eyes are completely dead in absolute disgust.

Nathaniel is surrounded by madness.

He feels it in every pore, this unholy pressure keeping him pinned even though he wants to stand and fight. It’s in the easy way Nathan handles the cleaver, the bloodlust in Lola’s eyes. DiMaccio doesn’t count, because Nathaniel has been around the man for a long time, and he’s something between a sociopathic mercenary and a frighteningly devoted protector. There is no madness unless someone threatens the Butcher—only steady loyalty.

But from Lola Malcom and Nathan Wesninski, the madness is smothering.

Nathaniel makes it to his knees and looks up at his father, staring at his chin. He can’t make himself look into those dead eyes. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to, regardless, but he doesn’t want to. It’s too terrifying.

“Stand up,” his father commands. “Don’t die like a little bitch, Nathaniel. I wasted a lot of time and money for this moment, don’t spend it on the fucking ground.”

Nathaniel grits his teeth and stands, but not for his father.

He stands for himself, and for Andrew.

“Funny how you have to have three people to secure a little bitch,” Nathaniel says quietly.

A full body shiver cripples Nathaniel as soon as the words leave his mouth, his mind immediately flooded by consequences of every manner, but the words are already hanging in the space between them. Nathaniel distantly wants to rescind them, to shove them back down into a hole of hatred, but he can’t.

He risks a glance at his father’s face and nearly folds.

His foot slides back half an inch before his mind catches up with his body, but it’s not enough.

The cleaver slices a clean line across his chest before he can completely outrun the path of the blade, drawing a grunt, but Nathaniel keeps going. His father’s madness and fury won’t rest for Nathaniel to regroup, so he’ll have to work with what he has. He dodges his father’s next swing and runs full sprint towards Lola, who’s blocking the exit to the tunnel that will lead out the garage, charged with nothing but desperation.

Lola smiles with the bite of a shark and readies herself for his tackle, but the Nathaniel they trained and the Neil who has spent all year playing Exy against some of the best players in the country are very different people. It’s almost embarrassing how easy it is, even in his horrible shape, to evade Lola’s knife and body and cross towards the door.

Perhaps this is the one bright spot of playing with the Ravens twelve hours a day with debilitating injuries—he knows how to use a useless body.

Still, Lola is quick and snags his shirt collar, choking him as he fights to reach the door. He tears himself out of her slight grip, but even that one second is enough for his father to cross the room, swinging his axe at Nathaniel’s back.

It’s a testament to his speed and terror that he manages to evade it, throwing himself right into Lola Malcolm’s arms.

She squeezes his raw, lacerated wrist, and the pain is enough to send stars bursting across his vision. He stumbles, and Lola sends him crashing to the cement ground, vision wavering. A kick to his bruised ribs sends him rolling to his back, choking on his next breath, and then his father is on top of him. There’s an axe at his throat and the tip of a cleaver against his eye and a monster pinning him down.

There’s nowhere left to run.

Nathaniel writhes in pain and terror, because it’s all he has left, and he barely recognizes the ragged, cornered breaths in his lungs.

“That’s enough,” his father says. Nathaniel would be less scared if his father showed any emotion—anger, a growl in his words, aggression in his movements, but though the fury is obvious, the Butcher’s movements are those clinical strokes of a mad genius honed with time and experience. Nathaniel is nothing against it.

Neil is nothing anymore.

“Please,” he says, and he hates the word, and he hates the terror and the begging, but he has nothing and Andrew might be dead and he’s alone and—“Please, just let me go, just let me go, I—”

“Lola,” his father’s cool voice says, his eyes never leaving Nathaniel’s. “Cut the tendons in his ankles, then his knees. You’re never going to run from me again,” he says, putting more pressure on the axe on Nathaniel’s throat, watching him wheeze as the weight became suffocating.

Nathaniel thinks he sobs, but it might be one more desperate plea, and it might be a stifled scream, or it might be silence, but Nathaniel doesn’t know. He hates himself, and wants to die, and closes his eyes.

A scream splits the basement, but it’s not his.

His eyes snap open as his father’s head whips in DiMaccio’s direction. Nathaniel follows his gaze, wheezing against the axe as his neck pulls against it, and sees.

His eyes go slowly wide, and the breath freezes in his lungs.

He has never seen DiMaccio on the ground. DiMaccio was in charge of training him in combat when he was young, and he broke several of Nathaniel’s bones, gave him bruises and cuts that lasted for weeks, but Nathaniel could never injure DiMaccio more than a tiny bruise. He is an unmovable wall that has kept his demon of a father alive for years and years.

And he is bleeding out, choking on his own blood, the dark, blood-stained form of Renee Walker standing over him.

But that’s not what Nathaniel cares about.

That’s not what Neil cares about.

At her shoulder is Andrew Minyard with a knife in his hand, blood in his familiar eyes, ice in his comforting frame, and he has eyes only for Neil.

“Andrew,” Neil breathes, tears gathering in his eyes. He doesn’t care if he’s saved, he doesn’t care if he dies. Andrew is alive. Andrew is okay.

Andrew is _here_.

“You’re a fucking menace, Josten, and you have a shit ton to answer for,” Andrew says, twirling the knife between his fingers, taking purposeful, confident steps in their direction. “You. Hands off.”

Neil chokes as his father presses the axe into his windpipe. Nathan turns to Andrew with the look of a viper who’s just sighted his next prey. “That’s an interesting way to speak to a man like me. I think I’m going to cut you into a few dozen pieces for interrupting, and then I’ll get back to you, Nathaniel.”

“You will not,” Renee says quietly, stepping over DiMaccio’s now-dead body, sliding her eyes to Lola. “I told you that you would regret this.”

Lola bares her teeth in something between a grin and a snarl. “You stepped into the wrong den, darling.”

Renee smiles. Neil has never seen the mild, quiet girl smile like that. “When you steal from another den, expect repercussions.” There’s a bloodied knife in her hand, as well, and it looks like it fits just perfectly in the delicate palm.

Neil doesn’t think he’ll ever look at Renee the same way again.

“I said,” Andrew says, drawing Neil’s eyes back to him, “hands off.”

Andrew is furious.

Neil can tell, because he knows Andrew, but it would be difficult for anyone else to see. His expressionless eyes are cold as ice. Neil hasn’t seen him look like that since Allison hit Aaron.

Neil gasps as his father finally gets off of him. Neil coughs, his feet sliding against the concrete ground as he tries to get back and away, but he can barely move. His father is still stading over him, one foot on either side of his sluggish body, and he knows he’s making it harder for Andrew, but he can’t move.

Andrew. Andrew was shot.

Even if he’s here, he’s in no shape to fight the butcher of Baltimore.

“Andrew,” Neil rasps, finally rolling to his side, locking eyes with Andrew as he flicks eyes to Neil’s form. “Andrew, you can’t—”

“We are far past you telling me what I can and cannot do,” Andrew says decisively. “You have no right to decide anything that I do. I will take you back, and you will tell me everything that you neglected to mention this year, understand?”

Neil’s eyes widen.

Despite his lies, despite his deception and his evasiveness, Andrew still wants him to come back.

The thought is enough to steal the air from Neil’s lungs.

Neil’s spine goes cold as his father laughs.

Nathaniel has heard his father laugh. They spent most of their time playing the picture perfect family, after all—he laughed all the time. But his real laugh, the one with shards of rusted iron and tinkling glass saturated in blood and death, Nathaniel has heard only a couple times.

This is one of those times, and it is the epitome of the madness in his father’s soul.

“You’re nothing,” his father says, stepping over Neil’s body towards Andrew. Renee moves to Andrew’s side, but Lola is quick to intercept with a smile and a tinkle of her own crazed laughter, and Neil is left to watch.

They shouldn’t have come for him. Neil isn’t worth this carnage. Nathaniel certainly isn’t.

“Andrew, pl—” Neil almost says, the word dying in his throat as Andrew’s steely eyes cut to him. “I’m begging you,” he says instead, reaching out a mutilated hand to Andrew. “Run.”

He directs his eyes to Renee as well. He can’t be responsible for anymore death. After Seth, after they almost took Andrew…he can’t be responsible for any more victims.

“You lost the right to ask for things like that,” Andrew decides, staring at Neil before cutting his eyes to his father. “I don’t like it when people touch my things.”

Nathan cocks his head with a patient smile, and Neil watches as the aggression builds, and knows that Nathan is waiting for the perfect moment to explode. He is a hunter, patient and cunning. A monster. “He was always mine. Neil does not exist.”

“Nathaniel died with his mother. Neil is mine, and you touched him,” Andrew explains, and Neil sees that there is a startlingly similar amount of bloodlust in their postures, their eyes, their twitches of adrenaline as they wait for the other to move. “That is enough.”

Neil blinks.

In the next instant, the basement is filled with flashes of silver and lines of blood and the smell of adrenaline and death.

And Neil can only watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo. For some reason All for the Game fanfics have been popping into my head a lot. Let me know what you think! <3


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